Woman's Work in America.
Meyer, Annie Nathan. Editor. Woman’s Work in America. With an Introduction by Julia Ward Howe. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1891.
12mo, 458 pp.; ink ownership stamp on title page; blue cloth, spine stamped in gilt; some wear to spine at top and bottom and tips; small smudge on front cover, about very good.
First Edition. Annie Nathan Meyer (1867-1951) was a writer, educator, and antisuffragist. She was a descendant of one of America’s oldest and most distinguished families of Sephardic Jews, and for over 60 years she played an important role in the intellectual life of New York City. An ardent Zionist, Meyer espoused many reform causes and was a dedicated feminist, although she did not support women’s suffrage. Since childhood, she was bright and well read, and in 1885 she enrolled in Columbia University’s Collegiate Course for Women. Unhappy with the structure of Columbia’s program, which barred women from lectures and only allowed them into tutorials and examinations, she left after one year and her experience led her to found Barnard College as an alternative for women seeking higher education.
Beyond her interest in education and social reform, Meyer was also interested in literature. She was a prolific writer, publishing three novels, an autobiography, several books of nonfiction, and twenty-six plays, and she belonged to numerous literary organizations including the Dramatist’s Guild of the Author’s League of America and the Committee of the Manhattan Little Theatre. In 1937 in honor of her career as a dramatist, Barnard established the Annie Nathan Meyer Drama Library.
Meyer’s plays reflected her political and moral outlook and were considered progressive works for the time period they were produced. (Her 1932 play Black Souls, for example, was one of the first plays performed by an all Black cast and one of the earliest known lynching dramas written by a white woman.) Meyer’s first published play, The Scientific Mother, appeared in the July 5, 1897 issue of Bookman, and in 1911 The Dominant Sex became Meyer’s first copyrighted play. This play was followed by many other notable plays such as The Advertising of Kate (written in 1921 and produced on Broadway in 1922) and The New Way (produced on Broadway in 1923 and published in 1925).
This is a survey of the state of women in the United States with an historical overview continuing on to the date of publication. The post Civil War period saw an increase in options for single women. Of course, there was the shortage of men due to the war which led to more women staying single and looking for ways to support themselves as well as make a tolerable life outside the traditional family. But, women had been slowly (by today’s standards) but with certainty changing their lives, following the intellectual lead of Margaret Fuller (Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845) and Sarah Grimke (Letters on the Equality of the Sexes…1838). Mary Livermore and the other contributors included herein – Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D. (Women in Medicine), Rev. Ada C. Bowles (Women in the Ministry), Ada M. Buttenbender (Women in Law) and Clara Barton (Women in Philanthropy – Work of the Red Cross) – wished to document how women might be self-supporting by detailing those who had been so in the past and those who were today. With appendices, charts, bibliography and index, this volume was not a mere self-congratulatory exercise for the contributors—it was a detailed map for the young women of their day. Annie Meyer Nathan’s choice of 18 contributors, she explains in the Foreward, needs no justification. All were pre-eminent in their field. Krichmar 2610. BAL 9480.
Jewish Heroes and Heroines in America, by Brody.
NAW II pp. 410-413.
One Woman, One Vote, by M.S. Wheeler, Editor
Women and the American Experience, V.1, by Nancy Woloch (1984).
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